Fifteen kilometers away, the Past World Paradise Comprehensive Research Institute.
The taxi had barely come to a stop before the heavy, unmarked metal door on the fourth basement level when the door slid open without a sound.
The pungent smell of disinfectant rushed at him.
Standing behind the door was Mobius.
This chief scientist, regarded in academic circles as a madman and a freak, was not today sitting in a daze behind her desk piled with anatomical diagrams, nor twirling a scalpel in her hand while sizing up her visitors with the gaze one reserves for lab mice.
She just stood there, her white lab coat not even properly buttoned, alarming dark circles beneath her eyes.
Those serpentine green pupils were now burning with a hair-raising fervor, fixed unwaveringly on the two who had just stepped out of the car.
This was far too abnormal.
Su Yu was somewhat surprised.
Every previous time he had come here, Mobius had always worn a languid, impatient look, as though her interest had been disturbed.
But today, she didn't even waste a single extra word.
"Follow me."
She turned crisply, her high heels striking the dust-free floor with a sharp, hurried clatter.
Passing through three isolation doors requiring dual retinal and fingerprint authentication, they entered the hidden passage at the very core of the laboratory.
The temperature here was at least five degrees lower than outside, and the eerie green strips of emergency lighting cast elongated shadows onto the cold, hard metal walls.
At the end of the passage was a sealed, sterile observation chamber.
In the center of the isolation chamber, a suit of pure white armor floated silently.
It was the "research material" Su Yu had earlier left here as collateral in exchange for Nuwa.
The "White Comet" that belonged to that Kiana Kaslana, far away in another world.
"Smack!"
Mobius walked up to the operating console, grabbed a thick stack of printouts, and slammed them down hard on the cold countertop.
The papers scattered, densely covered with complex spectral analysis charts and rows of red "Unidentified" warnings.
She turned around, propping both hands on the counter, those green eyes stabbing toward Su Yu.
"Where the hell did this thing come from?"
Her voice was slightly tight with agitation, giving him no chance to catch his breath.
"You'd better not try to fob me off with jokes, and don't even think about brushing me off with stupid talk about some high-tech gadget.
"If I hadn't pulled some strings through my personal high-level intelligence channels yesterday afternoon, I really wouldn't have known just what world-shaking things you've been up to over this past month."
Su Yu said nothing, but he knew the absurd things he had done this past month probably couldn't be hidden from the doctor before him.
Mobius's gaze slowly drifted away from the desk, past the figure standing in front, and landed almost tangibly on whatever was behind.
"So that must be the Kiana Kaslana you've been guarding like she's some thief, hiding her away and refusing to let me meet her...?"
She narrowed her eyes slightly, her tongue habitually licking her somewhat cracked lips—the subconscious gesture of a predator that had locked onto its prey.
"You're afraid I'll uncover something from her, aren't you?"
The cold draft in the corridor seemed to freeze in that instant.
Standing at the back, Sirin's body suddenly stiffened.
Those golden eyes, which always carried an overweening arrogance, now contracted violently beyond her control.
The cold metal walls all around, the pungent smell of disinfectant, the beeping of various precision instruments, and this green-haired woman before her in a white lab coat sizing her up with greedy eyes...
All these elements were like so many rusty keys, brutally jammed into the darkest lock of her memory.
The snowfields of Siberia.
The wailing in the lowest levels of the Tower of Babylon.
The endless drawing of blood, the injections, the incisions.
Those humans in white lab coats, coldly recording data, watching her convulse in agony within the petri dish.
Visibly, the last trace of color drained completely from Sirin's face.
She subconsciously took half a step back, her breathing turning short and arrhythmic, the hands hanging at her sides clenched tightly into fists, nails nearly digging into her flesh.
Mobius naturally did not miss this perfect reaction.
She began to chuckle in a low voice, the laughter hoarse and cloying, brimming with barely concealed excitement.
She snatched up the blood-drawing syringe from the operating console and, without any reservation, took a step forward. "Let me see just what kind of marvelous thing flows inside that shell of a body——"
However, she only managed a single step.
A back—not broad, but extraordinarily resolute—cut in without warning, like a solid wall, planting itself firmly between Sirin and Mobius.
"Mobius, stop."
It was Su Yu.
Low, cold, and hard.
Gone was his usual flippant, joking nonchalance.
Mobius halted her steps.
She looked at this partner who had suddenly turned so aggressive, the smile on her face gradually fading.
"You're giving me orders?" She coldly raised an eyebrow. "Lab mouse, get your role in this laboratory straight——"
"If you dare lay so much as a single finger on her right now," Su Yu's voice didn't waver in the slightest, "then I'll turn around this very instant and walk straight out."
He stared into Mobius's dangerous green eyes, not yielding a single step.
"Even if you pressed this place's security laser guns to my head right now, I would absolutely never breathe a single word to you about the 'Honkai.'"
The air instantly fell so silent it was suffocating.
The cooling fan on the console gave off a low hum.
"Are you threatening me? Lab mouse?"
Mobius gritted her teeth and asked word by word, the blood-drawing syringe creaking in her grip.
"I'm negotiating with you," he answered, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
In that brief, deathly still interval where their gazes clashed.
Sirin, standing behind the man, slowly loosened her tightly clenched fists.
Somewhat dazed, she looked at the back shielding her.
A gray casual suit jacket, shoulders not exaggeratedly broad.
But for some reason, in this cold laboratory filled with nightmarish memories, that back was like a mountain, shutting out all those nauseating stares and all that fear.
Ever since she had gained consciousness, no one had ever dared to shield her like this before those humans in white lab coats.
Those people would only watch coldly as she struggled.
But now, this Host, whom she had always regarded as an ant, as a target for venting.
This man whom she had trampled underfoot and made "submit."
He had actually, in order to protect her—or rather to protect this body that belonged to Kiana—placed himself in opposition to that clearly more insane, more dangerous woman.
Sirin's heart, which had been pounding wildly from PTSD, miraculously calmed under the cover of that back.
An utterly unfamiliar, indescribable ache crept quietly into her chest.
"Fine. Very good."
Mobius suddenly let out a cold laugh.
She tossed the blood-drawing syringe carelessly into a metal tray, producing a crisp clang.
"You win—this negotiation."
She turned around, propping both hands on the console again.
"But, since all those things were brought here by you, then I'm going to take a sample of your blood, and after that, give you a comprehensive, no-blind-spot full-body examination."
She whipped her head around, glaring through gritted teeth at the man before her.
"This is the bottom line I can offer. Otherwise, take your secrets and get out of my laboratory."
Su Yu looked at her, seeming to weigh the risks of this condition.
A few seconds later, he gave a light nod.
"I agree."
Just as he was about to step toward Mobius's console.
An impossible-to-ignore resistance came from the hem of his jacket.
The man stopped and turned his head.
Sirin didn't know why she had reached out her hand.
By the time she came to her senses, her fingers had already gripped the fabric of that gray suit tightly.
"Human..."
She opened her mouth; those golden eyes now held none of their lofty arrogance, only a panic even she herself couldn't comprehend.
"You... what are you going to do..."
In her framework of understanding, a so-called examination meant endless blood-drawing, dissection, injecting reagents of unknown composition into the veins, and watching flesh collapse and reassemble.
That was torture found only in hell.
And this human before her—who had clearly just gotten out of it—was now, in order to protect her, voluntarily offering himself onto the dissection table to become that green-haired madwoman's lab mouse?
Had he lost his mind?
Seeing Sirin looking as though she faced a mortal enemy, Su Yu was momentarily stunned.
Then the corners of his mouth slowly curved into a gentle arc.
He turned around, raised his hand, and let it fall naturally onto that somewhat disheveled white hair.
Normally—even yesterday—Sirin would have unhesitatingly summoned the Subspace Lance and severed this filthy hand that dared touch her noble head.
But at this moment, feeling the faintly warm weight resting on her head, she froze in place as if struck by a binding spell, not moving at all.
"Don't worry."
There was a soothing smile in Su Yu's voice as his palm gently ruffled the top of her head a couple of times.
"The doctor knows her limits. I won't die."
Won't die.
To Sirin's ears, those words sounded exactly like the perfunctory, cold lies those white-lab-coated researchers told her before each session of torment.
They carried no persuasive power whatsoever.
She bit down hard on her lower lip until she tasted a faint trace of blood.
"Don't go flattering yourself here."
She abruptly turned her face away, dodging the hand resting on her head.
Her voice was muffled, carrying an embarrassed, exasperated awkwardness.
"Don't forget, you're my only Anchor right now. If you die at this madwoman's hands, I won't survive either."
She drew a deep breath and turned her head again, those golden eyes bursting with an unprecedented ferocity as she glared at Mobius in the distance.
"If—and I mean if... it really comes to that point."
Sirin's voice was so low it seemed it could form shards of ice.
"I'll make that woman, and everything in this wretched laboratory, follow you into the grave."
Su Yu stood where he was, looking at this Queen baring her fangs and claws to disguise her concern. A flicker of astonishment passed through the depths of his eyes, then dissolved into deeper helplessness and amusement.
"Rest assured."
He withdrew his hand, pulling the hem of his clothes from her grip, and turned to walk toward the impatient-looking chief scientist.
"Didn't I promise you? Until you return to that world, I'll keep helping you all the way."
Ten minutes later.
Su Yu lay flat on the wide metal table.
He wore no restraints at all—entirely Mobius's reward for his "voluntary cooperation."
A light "snap."
Mobius expertly tied a tourniquet around Su Yu's right upper arm and flicked his vein a couple of times.
Sirin stood less than half a meter from the dissection table.
From the moment she entered this room, her gaze had not left Su Yu's body.
When she saw the thick, coldly glinting blood-collection needle in Mobius's hand, her breath suddenly hitched.
The floodgates of memory loosened once again, beyond her control.
The nightmares endured over countless days and nights in the Tower of Babylon, the pain of cold needles piercing skin and pushing unknown burning fluids into her veins—like countless venomous snakes gnawing at her body.
"No need to be nervous. Relax."
Su Yu tilted his head slightly, meeting Sirin's somewhat evasive eyes.
His complexion looked somewhat pale under the shadowless surgical lamp, but the corners of his mouth still wore that usual, carefree curve.
"It's just drawing a bit of blood. Think of it as a free checkup."
Sirin's nails dug deep into her palms, leaving several crescent-shaped red marks.
Why?
Why, in this world where even the air was so foul, without a single fluctuation of Honkai energy, had she become this weak?!
That Authority of the Herrscher of the Void that had once let her look down upon all things, that power that could effortlessly tear space apart and destroy cities—where had it gone?
If her power were still there, if she were still that lofty deity, she could right now crush that green-haired woman's skull and wipe this disgusting laboratory clean off the face of the earth!
Instead of standing here like a useless piece of trash, watching helplessly as a human—a subordinate not even worthy of carrying her shoes—lay on that cold table, enduring in her stead the humiliation and experimentation that had originally been meant for her!
Sirin's vision blurred for a moment.
At the end of that memory, ravaged and scarred, where the flames of war blotted out the sky.
In her daze, the Su Yu before her slowly overlapped with a figure from her memory.
There was an enormous demonic dragon.
Its scales were shattered beyond recognition, dark purple blood spilling down like raindrops.
But it still stubbornly spread that pair of battered dragon wings, letting out a mournful cry, using its body—vast enough to eclipse the heavens—to shield her resolutely.
Benares.
Her most loyal servant, and in that cold world, her only "family."
She had died.
Fighting to protect her to the very last moment, her consciousness dispersing, reverting once more into a mindless beast.
Until the very last moment, she had still been calling out to her——
Sirin's pupils trembled violently.
Her vision refocused.
The lunar craters vanished.
In their place was the man lying on the stainless-steel surface, pale-faced yet still trying to smile at her.
The man who had dared to fight her with his life in the consciousness space, who made her feel irritated and afraid—yet who, in her most helpless moment, had reached out his hand to her and said he wanted to help her.
The man who had taught her to use tea sets in the consciousness space, brewing delicious tea, and even gave her a slice of strawberry cake.
The man who earnestly recorded her preferences in a notebook, asking a few questions now and then, jotting and sketching in that notebook.
Two figures that should have been utterly different somehow faintly overlapped within a dazzling white light.
You cannot die.
I command you, human!
You are merely a spoil of war belonging to this Queen.
You are merely a human, frightened stiff by this Queen's majesty, who must obediently serve me!
You have not yet been thoroughly trampled beneath this Queen's feet.
You have not yet witnessed the day I return to that world and reclaim my throne!
Since you are my possession, only this Queen has the right to decide your life and death!
No one but me has the right to decide your life and death!!
Not that madwoman, not anyone in this world!
Sirin stared fixedly at the blood swaying inside the glass test tube.
It was the first time she had felt so clearly—even with a hint of despair—just how terrifying a thing it was to lose one's power.
She was supposed to be a deity looking down upon all living things.
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